LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - Nov 5, 2015) - Macat, an online learning platform, library, and critical thinking tool, today announced $30 million in total financing that will enable the company to expand the reach of its content and scale its digital platform globally. In this round, which has three closings, the company is adding $10 million in equity to a previously raised, undisclosed round of $20 million from a group of angel investors. Macat has been developing and creating academically rigorous, multimedia content in the social sciences and humanities since 2012.
In addition, Macat, in partnership with the University of Cambridge, is commissioning the largest international critical thinking study ever held. Macat has worked alongside critical thinking experts for the last two years to create a scaffolding that takes users up Bloom's Taxonomy by helping them progress from basic retention and comprehension to analysis and creativity. A study with the University of Cambridge proved that Macat's content can significantly improve critical thinking in only 8 hours, and testing with students, teachers and lifelong learners demonstrated how useful the platform is for writing essays, completing lesson plans and for general learning and development in everyday life.
"We believe critical thinking is a core twenty-first century skill that is crucial for all societies to ask meaningful questions, act rationally and work efficiently," said Macat CEO Hassan Abdou. "There is a growing gap between what industry needs in terms of critical thinking and what graduates arriving in the workplace have to offer. Strong critical thinking skills are necessary to help us make good decisions, solve complex problems and think creatively. Macat is committed to help bridge this gap by cultivating critical thinking skills and making the world's greatest ideas accessible to anyone."
Macat believes education is a right and not a privilege. The education company works with leading academics to create rigorous, accessible analyses of seminal texts to help develop critical thinking skills, which are essential for every society and economy. Over 75 analyses and 1,200 original books are currently included in Macat's multimedia platform, which is part library and part educational database. Users can browse sharply curated collections, explore Masterclasses, select a theme and choose their preferred way into the texts. Deep search capabilities around academically meta-tagged information make it simple for users to find and engage with content as they see fit, whether it's a 3 minute video, a curated playlist or an interactive text.
Some sample Macat analyses include:
- The Art of War, Sun Tsu
- Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty
- Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington
- The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
- The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
While the call for greater emphasis on critical thinking has been substantiated by numerous academic studies and more recently by President Barack Obama in his critique of the United States' current standardized testing system, there remains a need for comprehensive data sets that are extensive enough to understand how to best develop these skills across societies and nations. Macat plans to meet this need by commissioning and leading the largest ever, international study on critical thinking. Over the course of four months, more than 2,000 universities, schools, and companies will be surveyed as a part of this initiative. In order to learn more about this study and how your school or organization can participate, please visit www.macat.com/ct-study.
About Macat
Macat is an agile based online learning platform, library, and critical thinking tool that explains the world's greatest ideas in the social sciences and humanities and helps improve problem-solving skills for teenagers and adults of all ages. Macat has been researching, developing and market testing its content and pedagogy since 2012 with learning institutions in the USA and UK. Macat believes that education is a right, not a privilege. It is dedicated to making the texts of the world's most influential thinkers accessible and comprehensible to everybody, everywhere, anytime. Its library consists of academic analyses of key, seminal works written by active scholars from top universities around the globe. Through its cloud based, html-5, multimedia platform, Macat makes it easier, faster and more attainable to use these texts to develop better critical thinking skills and build a better, smarter world.
Macat is a global company and hosts a U.S. headquarters in Washington, D.C. and EMEA headquarters in London. For more information, visit www.macat.com or follow via Twitter @macat_edu.